Gotta Stay One Step Ahead

Intro

We’ve wrapped up pretty much everything there is to know about competitive battling. I’m 100% sure I missed something important, but now it’s time to learn some important tactics for the battle field. Competitive battling is like chess; you want to stay several moves ahead of the opponent. I may not be a good team builder, but I love to strategize.

See even the evil organizations had strategies, it just so happened that
their plans were foiled by the likes of children

Strategizing might be hard to explain because it’s one of the things you learn better from experience, but I’ll do my best to try and explain it.

Be sure to check out previous post if you find yourself confuzzled: http://pokeswerve.blogspot.com/

Choosing Your Lead

The first Pokemon you choose to lead with is essential. If you can figure out what Pokemon your opponent is going to lead with you can easily counter them; there’s a Team Preview before the battle, so each trainer knows what Pokemon the other trainer has. Common leads include Pokemon that sets up Entry Hazards and fast Pokemon with moves like U-Turn or Volt Switch, which can be referred to as Scouts.

Sorry no pictures of any of those leads, I don't
like them plus their pictures are in their links :P

Common leads:

·       Cloyster – Early game sweeper

·       Victini – U-Turner

·       Ambipom – Fake Out/U-Turner

·       Galvantula – Focus Sashed to ensure Sticky Web

·       Smeargle – Focus Sashed to ensure Hazards/Spore

·       Ninjask – Baton Pass user

Things to consider when you’re choosing a lead:

·       Look for a Pokemon that can set up Entry Hazards on your opponent’s team

·       Check to see if they have a Spinner/Defogger in case you want to get up your Entry Hazards

o   That tells you if you want to get your Entry Hazards up sooner or later

·       A good stop to leads with Hazards is using a Pokemon with Taunt, this prevents the use of any non-attacking move

Serperior is a lead I like to use because it's fast, and it can 
learn Taunt and Dual Screens (Light Screen and Reflect)

·       When in doubt, choose a Scout

o   If you’re unsure of what your opponent will lead with, it might be a good idea to check it out and switch out

Example of choosing a lead:

·       I like to lead with my Swampert, to put up Hazards, and sometimes trainers predict that and counter with a Grass-Type Pokemon or one that knows a Grass-Type move.

o   They predicted me to lead with Swampert, and now I’m forced to switch out because Swampert is 4x weak to Grass.

It wouldn't be a good post without my boy Kippert

Switching

Switching is one of the most important parts of a battle. Unlike a normal play through of a Pokemon game, trainers in competitive battles switch their Pokemon, a lot. Also if you’re used to the Shift Battle Style you can forget about that because all competitive battles are on the Set Battle Style, meaning you can’t switch out after you faint an opponent’s Pokemon.

Switching is all about the type matchup. Your Grass-Type Pokemon isn’t going to want to stay in on a Fire-Type Pokemon, well unless you know it’s not going to faint.

·       Trainers will normally switch into a Pokemon that has a type advantage over your Pokemon, or a Pokemon that may not have the type advantage but some way to deal with your Pokemon.

o   One reason a trainer may switch into your Pokemon with a Pokemon that has a disadvantage is if they’re Sacrificing it; meaning that don’t need it anymore.

·       Having Pokemon with a diverse move pool is very beneficial. This way you’re able to do more damage to a wider range of Pokemon.

Risk vs. Reward

This is a big part of competitive battling. When battling you want to get inside your opponent’s head by picking up on their tendencies. After picking up on their tendencies you’ll want to try and predict what they’re going to do next. That can either be a good thing, where you’re right, or a bad thing, where you’re wrong.

A lot of the times I’ll go for the risk, YOLO, and more times than not I get the short end of the stick. But once the risk pays becomes a reward, oh boy, does that feel amazing!

 

Here’s a video (14mins) about Risk vs. Reward: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLxFpaVQVmU

Wrap Up

For me the biggest part of learning strategy is through experience. Once you’ve had more battles you start picking up on things. And I’ll tell you, SOME PEOPLE ARE NOT ORIGINAL! You’ll most likely be seeing similar things on people teams, so you’ll eventually/hopefully figure out a way to stop them. It’s not like it’s the end of the world is you lose; I’ve lost my fair share of battles and I keep going (mostly out of boredom because I’ve started to hate competitive battling, but that’s a story for another time).